If you’ve read my tips to Snapchat marketing here’s a follow up on using Snap features not everyone knows exist. And if you haven’t… you should. But let’s debrief. Snapchat is a social media mobile application that lets users send and receive time-sensitive photos and videos, which expire upon viewing (Stec, 2015).

The same features that make Snapchat fun can also make it frustrating for users, so here’s a guide to adopt those features and boost your channel with your target audience.

Social media are generally defined as “Internet-based, disentrained, and persistent channels of mass-personal communication facilitating perceptions of interactions among users, deriving value primarily from user-generated content” (Carr & Hayes, 2015, p. 49). Therefore, your content is key, and how it is measured. Is it received well?

As previously mentioned, it is an app dominated by a young demographic. However, companies must develop an understanding of their audience’s demographic, needs and wants from a social media platform of a company.

So… if you’re a company and aren’t “getting” the yellow-ghost app, it’s because your firm hasn’t spent the time to learn beyond its basic “snap and send” features. Look no further, I’m here to help.

Take a read below for those innovative surprises:

Hack 1: Buy On-Demand Geo-filters – they’re cheaper than you think!

This is a fairly inexpensive technique, starting from £5.99 here in the UK (Sulleyman, 2017). Firms can create a personalised filter sponsoring their company or a campaign in a designated location. The pricing of geo-filters is based upon;

• Time frame
• Square footage catchment area
• Location itself
• Duration of the availability

Each of the pricing factors are also where firms need to be cautious. If these factors aren’t done with research and have clarity on where and timings to capture the intended customers it could prove to be a waste of money – so, do your research.

Firms can use a geo-filter strategically for events (i.e. in a retail market, around sales), or to market the location. Another example could be ‘The village’ in Westfield’s shopping centre creating a geo-filter when anyone is in or around the whole shopping centre’s precinct, thus, creating intrigue to visit ‘the village’. Not to mention it helps recreate the human to human interaction via the user experience in which customers enjoy when buying in-store (Ha, 2002).

Firm’s must be aware, of surrounding areas to a store they want their filters to pop up by. Geo-filters should ideally create a domino effect of social media engagement leading to curiosity of other social media platforms from that brand.

Below are examples of geo-filters in practise done brilliantly by Luxurious W Hotels:

Like what you see? Have a click here to personalise your own filters and lenses https://www.snapchat.com/l/en-gb/create/

Huang and Benyoucef (2012) state that in the conversation design principle it is beneficial for companies to offer rich social content in various formats, such as text, photo, video and audio and this will improve the social content presentation [see figure 2]. Which can be done brilliantly using the geo-filters, by incorporating all of the above mentioned.

Hack 2: Download your Snaps and upload them elsewhere

Due to a fantastic new update on Snap, you can share stories with anyone! (Hamill, 2018). This is essential to make your brand digitally multidimensional. It diversifies your outreach to consumers.

By simply downloading your Snapchat postings or even the whole story, these can then be shared to other programmes such as; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Similar to Hack 2, this strategy is just advancing what you have access to already as a brand! It’ll boost your following from seeing the shared link content on the elder platforms.

If audiences see Snapchat links consistently they’ll build intrigue and are more than likely to download the app to engage with your brand. By concealing a message, you incite curiosity. The recipient begins to wonder what it is, what it could be, or what they could receive. Reveal marketing gives marketers the opportunity to take advantage of humans innate curiosity (Flamm, 2015). It’s the app consumers know they’re getting the inside scoop on. So continue to make it the platform they’ll need to see your offers and events from a backstage perspective. Take a look here at Vogue’s Snapchat for NYFW https://www.vogue.com/article/snapchat-new-york-fashion-week-highlights. Once audiences see these videos, whether it be too late to view them live or not, the FOMO (Fear-of-Missing-Out) will catch them, and they’ll be sure to download Snap or add your brand’s account.

Hack 3: Track your Snap Content

The most Important Hack… Make sure you track your Snapchat content!!! If this isn’t taken on board, you cannot track what is received well or badly by consumers.

Here’s what you’ll want to keep an eye on:

• Timing of your Snaps: it’ll indicate when your Snaps get the most views base on times and what days. Discover your key engagement times.
• New Followers: how many accounts request you get per day, and based on any promotion you did to attract them.
• Views: the brilliant app gives you exact figures of unique views on each Snap story.
• Screenshots: this is a great indicator for the number of people who saved the Snap for later or wanted a deeper look. This is particularly helpful for promotional offers i.e. with discount codes or ‘snap and show this at the till’ screenshot campaigns.

So… there you have it. 3 hacks to enhance a platform you may already be using, but just not well enough. Always track your content through the four measures mentioned above, but do keep an eye out for low engagement and why? Are you posting the right content, and at the right times? Maybe try a geo-filter to give the platform the boost it needs.

Best of luck, enjoy your Snapping!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

Alhabash, S. and Ma, M. (2017). A Tale of Four Platforms: Motivations and Uses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat Among College Students?. Social Media + Society, 3(1), p.205630511769154.

Carr C. T., Hayes R. A. (2015). Social media: Defining, developing, and divining. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 23, 46–65.

Flamm, J. (2015). Reveal Marketing: How to Drive Intrigue and Engagement for Your Content. [Blog] Salesforce Blog. Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2015/04/reveal-marketing-drive-intrigue-engagement-content.html [Accessed 17 Mar. 2018].

Ha, S.H., 2002. Helping online customers decide through web personalization. IEEE Intelligent systems, 17(6), pp.34-43.

Hamill, J. (2018). How to share Snapchat Stories with people who don’t use the app | Metro News. [online] Metro.co.uk. Available at: http://metro.co.uk/2018/01/23/share-snapchat-stories-people-dont-use-app-7252942/ [Accessed 17 Mar. 2018].

Huang, Z., & Benyoucef, M. (2012). From e-commerce to social commerce: a close look at design features. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

Russell, J. (2018). Snapchat Analytics: How to Measure Your Brand’s Efforts on the App. [online] Hootsuite Social Media Management. Available at: https://blog.hootsuite.com/snapchat-analytics/ [Accessed 18 Mar. 2018].

Stec C. (2015). Social media definitions: The ultimate glossary of terms you should know. Hubspot. Retrieved from http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6126/The-Ultimate-Glossary-120-Social-Media-Marketing-Terms-Explained.aspx

Sulleyman, A. (2017). How to create your own Snapchat Geofilter. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snapchat-filters-geofilter-cost-uk-how-to-create-phone-desktop-location-overlay-guide-a7931236.html [Accessed 17 Mar. 2018].

Vogue. (2016). The Best NYFW Moments Captured on Vogue’s Snapchat. [online] Available at: https://www.vogue.com/article/snapchat-new-york-fashion-week-highlights [Accessed 18 Mar. 2018].